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Relation of rumen microbiome and blood transcriptome with the genetic merit in Italian Simmental and Italian Holstein cows
Full text linkPhenotypic selection of livestock over last 50 years, in particular of dairy cows, has been effective in increase productions and improve animal nutrients utilization.
The effects of the phenotypic improvement, in particular on the rumen microbial profile and on the gene expression remains largely unknown.
In this study a picture of the effects of the estimated breeding value for a productive trait on cows rumen metagenome and blood transcriptome of healthy Italian Holstein and Italian Simmental lactating cows is presented.
Preliminarily, two Italian Holstein and two Italian Simmental commercial farms were selected in the Friuli Venezia Giulia region for having similar management and feeding conditions.
Within each farm healthy cows, ranging from two to five calvings and from 70 to 180 days in milk were selected. Within each farm cows were then grouped in three classes of Estimated Breeding Value for milk protein (EBVp). The EBV classes were defined within each breed and farm by sorting the EBV values into quartiles, where the first (Q1) and the third (Q3) quartiles correspond to the ±25% extremes EBV values versus the mean of the distribution. Three quartiles (Q1, Q2 and Q3) resulted in each farm.
Milk yields and compositions form 135 cows were obtained from the official recording service and the same day blood, urine and rumen content were sampled during the morning meal and subjected to biochemical analysis.
These data were used to asses the relationship between EBVp and productive traits and metabolic condition. Based on these results, two subsets of cows were chosen to investigate rumen microbiome and blood gene expression.
For rumen microbiome composition two EBVp minus and two EBVp plus variant cows for each farm and each breed (overall 16 cows) were selected. The massive parallel High Throughput Sequencing of the whole rumen contents and the annotation procedure of FASTQ base called files allowed to describe the classify the taxonomy of the bacterial and archaeal communities. Statistical analysis applied to the abundance profiles at the different taxonomic levels indicated a significant effect of breed and EBVp. Within Bacteria domain Italian Simmental cows had significant (P<0.05) higher presence of bacteria belonging to Actinobacteria and lower bacteria of the Clostridia class in comparison to Italian Holstein cows. Rumen contents of Italian Simmental cows were also significantly richer (P<0.001) of archaeal Methanobacteria than Italian Holstein cows. Overall, the EBVp resulted positively related with Bacteroidetes (P<0.01) and negatively with methanogen Euryarchaeota phyla.
The investigation of gene expression profile at the blood level was performed in eight cows for each EBVp quartile (eight Q1, eight Q2 and eight Q3) for one Italian Simmental and one Italian Holstein farm (overall 24 Italian Simmental and 24 Italian Holstein cows).
For the dual purpose Italian Simmental cows the most relevant affected pathways were related to glutathione metabolism and intestinal IgA production. In the Q3 group GSS and TGF1B genes were significantly (P<0.05) over expressed in comparison to the Q1 group.
For the Italian Holstein cows the most relevant affected pathways were related to T cell receptor and adipocytokine signalling pathways. In the Q3 group CD3G, CD4 and ACSL1 genes were significantly (P<0.05) over expressed in comparison to the Q1 group.
At the best of our knowledge, this approaches has never been used and a direct comparison with published studies is not straight full, but some preliminary considerations from the data gathered from our study can be drawn.
Despite of the limited number of cows included in the study, the rumen metagenomic data indicate that microbial population is significantly affected by genetic merit other than breed.
The analysis of blood gene expression showed that also specific metabolic and immunitary pathways are directly related to the genetic merit, and can be considered a signature of the quantitative selection.
Starting from this preliminary observations, the approaches are promising since they can identified phenotypic biomarkers that can be used for genomic selection, based on rumen microbial profile and differentially expressed genes more than on DNA variants
Nutrigenomic activity of plant derived compounds in health and disease: Results of a dietary intervention study in dog
Full text linkThe study was conducted to investigate the effects of dietary administrations of four nutraceuticals in dogs. Seventy
four dogswere enrolled in the trials, 24 healthy dogs were fedwith a control diet (CT) and the experimental
groups received for 60 days the same diet supplemented with nutraceuticals, namely Echinacea angustifolia (EA,
0.10 mg/kg live weight as echinacoside; 14 dogs), Vaccinium myrtillus (VM, 0.20 mg/kg live weight as
anthocyanidin, 13 dogs), Curcuma longa (CL, 6.60 mg/kg live weight as curcumin, 18 dogs with arthrosis), and
Sylibum marianum (SM, 1.5 mg/kg live weight as sylibin, 8 dogs with hepatopathy). Dogs were weighted at the
beginning of study and blood samples were collected at the beginning (T0) and at the end (T60) of the study.
VM significantly down regulated TNF, CXCL8, NFKB1 and PTGS2 and decreased plasma ceruloplasmin (CuCp).
The activity of EA was evidenced by the significant decrease of TNF and NFKB1 expression and CuCp levels and
by the increase of plasma Zn. Administration of CL caused a significant decrease of CuCp and increase of Zn
and a down regulation of TNF, CXCL8, NFKB1 and PTGS2, corroborating the anti-inflammatory action of curcuminoids.
After 60 days of treatmentwith SM, plasma ALT/GPT activitywas reduced and paraoxonase was increased,
supporting the antioxidant activity of silymarin, also confirmed by the significant up regulation of SOD2. Results
indicated that nutraceutical administrations in dogs can be an interesting approach to modulate immune response
in order to improve health condition of animals
Microbial biodiversity of the liquid fraction of rumen content from lactating cows
Full text linkHost and dietary interactions with the rumen microbiome can affect the efficacy of supplements, and their effect on the
composition of the bacterial population is still unknown. A 16S rRNA metagenomic approach and Next-Generation Sequencing
(NGS) technology were used to investigate the bacterial microbiome composition in the liquid fraction of the rumen content
collected via stomach tubing. To investigate biodiversity, samples were taken from three groups of four lactating dairy cows given
a supplement of either 50 g of potato protein (Ctrl group), or 50 g of lyophilized Saccharomyces cerevisiae (LY group) or 50 g of
dried S. cerevisiae (DY group) in a potato protein support. Rumen samples were collected after 15 days of dietary treatments and
milk production was similar between the three groups. Taxonomic distribution analysis revealed a prevalence of the Firmicutes
phylum in all cows (79.76%) and a significantly ( P<0.05) higher presence of the genus Bacillus in the DY group. Volatile fattyacid
concentration was not significantly different between groups, possibly because of relatively high inter-animal variability or
limited effect of the treatments or both, and the correlation analysis with bacterial taxa showed significant associations, in
particular between many Firmicutes genera and butyrate. Limited differences were observed between dietary treatments, but the
lack of microbiome data before yeast administration does not allow to draw firm conclusions on the effect of dietary treatments
Salivary cortisol concentration in healthy dogs is affected by size, sex, and housing context
No full textThe aim of the article was to investigate the effect of site of sampling, size, and sex on the variations of salivary cortisol of healthy dogs. Samples of saliva were collected from dogs of private owners (n 1⁄4 13), kennels (n 1⁄4 4), and shelters (n 1⁄4 2). For each dog, samples were collected at the first interaction of the day with man (T0) before the morning meal (6:00-8:00 AM), 30 minutes after the meal (T1), and 30 minutes after the last interaction of the day with man (T2), when dogs were resting and apparently relaxed. A total of 92 dogs belonging to 17 different pure breeds or crossbred were eligible for the study, being 19 dogs privately owned, 47 recruited in kennels, and 26 hosted in shelters. Salivary cortisol concentrations of the dog population were not normally distributed, and data were transformed to natural logarithm (ln). The mean values ranged from 0.70 to 3.40 ln ng/mL, with an average of 0.90 0.76 ln ng/mL, corresponding to 0.50, 30.00, and 3.48 4.05 ng/mL. Mean salivary cortisol was significantly higher for dogs hosted in shelters than those privately owned or in the kennels (P < 0.05). Cortisol values from intact dogs did not differ between males and females, whereas for castrated males and spayed females, significantly lower values were found (P < 0.01 intact vs. castrated males; P < 0.05 intact vs. spayed females). Mean salivary cortisol concentrationwas significantly lower for giant and large-sized dogs than for small-sized dogs (P < 0.01), whereas mean cortisol for medium-sized dogs was not significantly different from the other sizes. The interaction of site with time of sampling was significant (P < 0.05), with the highest cortisol concentration at T2 for dogs privately owned and housed in the kennels and at T0 for dogs hosted in the shelters. This study, focused on healthy dogs, indicated that several factors can affect the concentration of salivary cortisol. Further studies also involving pathological conditions are required to identify critical values that can be used for clinical management settings
Elemental composition in commercial dry extruded and moist canned dog food
No full textThe aim of the study was to investigate elemental contents in commercial pet foods for adult dogs at maintenance. The elemental composition of 15 dry extruded diets (DED) and 22 moist canned diets (MCD) collected from a pet shop were analyzed in triplicate with inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy and with mass spectrometry for Se. Significantly higher contents of Ca, P, (P < 0.05), K and Na (P < 0.0001) were measured in MCD than in DED, whilst the contrary was observed for Cu and Zn (P = 0.001). All the analyzed foods supplied on average micro minerals above the recommended daily requirements of FEDIAF, except for Cu (mean supply of foods 85%+12) in the MCD and Se both in DED (mean supply in foods 21%+4) and MCD (mean supply in foods 34%+7) samples. All the analyzed foods supplied macro elements above the recommended daily allowances except for K (73%+6) in the DED and Mg (92%+5) in MCD. Principal component analysis with essential elements (EE) as input variables (Ca, P, K, Na, Mg, Fe, Mn, Zn, Cu, Se) explained 63.85% of total variance with the first two components and clustered DED and MCD. Factor scores of Cu, Zn, Mg and Mn were higher for MCD and Ca, P, K and Na for DED. Significantly higher (P < 0.01) frequency of presence of non essential elements (NEE) Cd, Cr, Li and Pb (p < 0.01) were observed in MCD in comparison to DED. Although there are limitations in this study, the results showed a wide variability of elemental contents among per foods and suggest the need of routinely analysis to accomplish with the recommended daily allowances and for the
Transcriptome profiles of whole blood in Italian Holstein and Italian Simmental lactating cows diverging for genetic merit for milk protein
No full textThe aim of the research was to investigate the variation of gene expression in the blood of lactating cows in relation to the genetic merit for productive traits. For the study, 24 Italian Holstein (IH) cows from a single farm and 24 Italian Simmental (IS) cows from a second farm were selected. Cows were in mid-lactation, and farms had similar management and feeding conditions. For each breed, cows were separated into 3 classes of estimated breeding value (EBV) for milk protein yield (EBVp), namely, 8 cows with low EBVp (low group, LG), 8 cows with high EBV (high group, HG), and the 8 cows closest to the median (medium group, MG). Gene expression was measured on blood with a whole transcriptome bovine microarray, and data of LG and HG were expressed relative to MG. The number of differentially expressed genes between the low and high EBVp groups were 443 for IS and 281 for IH cows. The IS cows had a greater number of genes (398 vs. 241 in IH cows) with opposite expression in the high and low EBV groups, compared with the MG. In IS cows, the largest number of pathways affected were within the KEGG subcategories of “energy metabolism,” “lipid metabolism,” nd “metabolism of cofactors and vitamins.” Furthermore, the “glutathione metabolism” pathway was markedly affected, with GSTM1 (from glutathione-S-transferase family), GSS (glutathione synthetase), and G6PD (glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase) upregulated in the IS HG but down regulated
in the IS LG group. The “intestinal immune network for IgA production” pathway had 2 bovine leukocytes antigen (BoLA-DQ) genes, and the B-cell activating factor of the TNF superfamily (TNFSF13B) upregulated in the IS LG group and down regulated in the IS HG group. The IH cows had the highest number of affected pathways in the “metabolism” and “organismal systems” categories, the latter with 5 out of 10 subcategories relative to the immune system. Within the “T cell receptor signaling pathway,” the IH HG cows had up regulation of the CD1d, CD4, and CD3 antigens and down regulation of the NFkB subunit ReLa gene. This study revealed that specific metabolic and immunological pathways are directly related to genetic merit, and could be considered a signature of quantitative selection. Starting from these preliminary observations, the comparison of differentially expressed genes among animals with different EBVp seems a promising approach to unravel molecular response at a blood level associated with productive traits
Association of index of welfare and metabolism with the genetic merit of holstein and simmental cows after the peak of lactation
Full text linkThe study investigated the relationship of markers of welfare and metabolism in milk, urine and blood with the genetic merit of Holstein and Simmental cows after the peak of lactation. Cows were selected from 3 Simmental (IS) and 2 Holstein (IH) commercial dairy farms. Within each farm, cows were
ranked according to the estimated breeding value for milk protein yield (EBVp) from minus to positive and selected every 5 EBVps from minus to positive values (about 20% lactating cows for each farm). Milk was sampled and analysed for protein, fat, lactose, cortisol contents and somatic cell count (SCC). Blood and urines were analysed for biomarkers of metabolism and welfare. Significantly lower body condition score (BCS) was observed for IH in
comparison to IS. Plasma creatinine was higher in IS, whilst Zn, total antioxidant status and glutathione peroxidase was higher in IH. The creatinine N to N ratio in urine was significantly higher for IS, while the purine derivatives (PD) N to creatinine N ratio was higher for IH. The EBVp was negatively related to BCS and glucose for IS and to plasma b-hydroxybutyrate in both breeds. EBVp was negatively Related to urinary PD N to total N ratios for IS
and to PD N to creatinine N ratio for IH. These preliminary results would indicate that the selection of cows for milk protein yield had minor effect on plasma and milk biomarkers of welfare. Instead, biomarkers of metabolism were more affected by breed and genetic merit
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